U.S. Pat. No. 5,340,040 (Bussiere et al.), U.S. Pat. No. 6,578,784 (Lischynski) issued Jun. 17, 2003 and U.S. Pat. No. 6,708,911 (Patterson) issued Mar. 23rd 2004 to Highline Manufacturing Inc. disclose details of a known type of bale processor in which there is provided a hopper with two end walls and two side walls converging inwardly and downwardly to a discharge area at the bottom of the side walls. One of the side walls has an opening at the discharge area to allow material to be discharged. Within the hopper is provided one or more driven rollers which act to rotate the bale around its axis arranged longitudinally of the hopper. At the bottom of the hopper is provided a flail roller which rotates around an axis longitudinally of the hopper and carries a priority of flails for engaging and removing the baled crop material to be discharged through the discharge opening. The disclosures of these patents is incorporated herein by reference so that further details not specifically disclosed herein may be obtained by reference to those documents.
Mixing of grain and/or other particulate additives to hay for feeding animals is well known and widely used. Various arrangements for mixing using drums and the like are well known. In recent years bales crop materials have been processed using a machine of the type of Highline above and as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 6,199,781 (Hruska) issued Mar. 13th 2001 and U.S. Pat. No. 6,644,575 (Farrell) issued Nov. 11th 2003 attachments have been provided for such machines by which the particulate additive is applied onto the row of hay along side the machine after the hay has been laid. Thus a container is attached to the front or rear of the machine and a conveyor carries the material to the rear of the vehicle to drop the material onto the row.
Another machine is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,467,710 (Patterson) issued Oct. 22nd 2002 which uses a conveyor carrying bales to a disintegration system which co-operates with another conveyor for the particulate material to drop the two materials onto a discharge conveyor. This arrangement is less satisfactory because it does not use the hopper type bale processor which has become well established in this industry.